The partnership in Windsor, CT started with a Professional Learning Plan co-constructed with the District leadership. The focus is the transition years Middle School and grade 9 teachers and counselors from Windsor High School together with departmental chairs and school and district leadership and professional learning staff form a single Cohort participating in seminars, mini-workshops on particular strategies, demonstration lessons, classroom observations, peer coaching, and integrated lesson development. All demonstrations are drawn from the existing curriculum and address Common Core Standards.
The Windsor school and district leadership are also supported in focusing on the values, knowledge, skills, and dispositions that principals, district and school coaches need to support the teachers and students in implementing The Pedagogy of Confidence.
In addition, the Windsor District and NUA Partnership is supporting the role of counselor, which is critical in these early adolescent years especially in the lives of school-dependent youngsters. A series of sessions addresses how counselors can add to their repertoire of skills to support confidence, resiliency and the high intellectual performance of students.
Finally, StudentVoiceNUA is designed to bring students into authentic interactions with teachers to reshape curriculum, teaching, assessment, guidance and other matters that influence high intellectual performance and youth development. In Windsor, a cadre of 8th and 9th graders will work together with the mentor and a teacher coordinator on a project of their choice that will allow their voices to be heard by parents, teachers and the community at large.